Overview

Microsoft provides virtual machine disk images to facilitate website testing
in multiple versions of IE, regardless of the host operating system.
Unfortunately, setting these virtual machines up without Microsoft's VirtualPC
can be extremely difficult. The ievms scripts aim to facilitate that process using
VirtualBox on Linux or OS X. With a single command, you can have IE6, IE7, IE8
and IE9 running in separate virtual machines.

IE6 only - Install network adapter drivers by opening the drivers CD image in the VM.

Note

The IE6 network drivers must be installed upon first boot, or an
activation loop will prevent subsequent logins forever. If this happens,
restoring to the clean snapshot will reset the activation lock.

The VHD archives are massive and can take hours or tens of minutes to
download, depending on the speed of your internet connection. You might want
to start the install and then go catch a movie, or maybe dinner, or both.

Once available and started in VirtualBox, the password for ALL VMs is "Password1".

Recovering from a failed installation

Each version is installed into a subdirectory of ~/.ievms/vhd/. If the installation fails
for any reason (corrupted download, for instance), delete the version-specific subdirectory
and rerun the install.

If nothing else, you can delete ~/.ievms and rerun the install.

Specifying the install path

To specify where the VMs are installed, use the INSTALL_PATH variable:

Features

Clean Snapshot

A snapshot is automatically taken upon install, allowing rollback to the
pristine virtual environment configuration. Anything can go wrong in
Windows and rather than having to worry about maintaining a stable VM,
you can simply revert to the clean snapshot to reset your VM to the
initial state.

The VMs provided by Microsoft will not pass the Windows Genuine Advantage
and cannot be activated. Unfortunately for us, that means our VMs will
lock us out after 30 days of unactivated use. By reverting to the
clean snapshot the countdown to the activation apocalypse is reset,
effectively allowing your VM to work indefinitely.

Resuming Downloads

If one of the comically large files fails to download, the curl
command used will automatically attempt to resume where it left off.
Thanks, rcmachado (https://github.com/rcmachado).